A gas tax hike could be coming for Texas drivers. The El Paso Times covered a meeting of a legislative transportation committee where the idea was discussed:

Some legislators concerned about how to pay for new highways in Texas suggested looking at increasing the 20 cents a gallon state fuel tax.

Members of the Texas Senate Transportation Committee, who convened in El Paso, said money is lacking to build new roads.

The chairman, Sen. John Carona of Dallas, said Tuesday that Texas is growing but having no money to build more roads and "no more debt that we can issue."

For more from Carona, who made an unsuccessful push earlier this year to let the state's large counties raise the gas tax, check out BurkaBlog, which posted an e-mail from Carona on Oct. 21.

Michael Quinn Sullivan on the Empower Texans web site also recently weighed in on Carona and the gas tax.

In light of this we found it interesting that Carona was one of the top senate spenders of taxpayer dollars to jet around on his private plane on legislative business.

Check out the full Texas Watchdog story here.

Carona was reimbursed by taxpayers to the tune of $17,000 for using  his private plane over a recent year and a half period -- and many of those flights were between cities with major airports. Commercial flights may have been cheaper.

Also, here's a recent table on how Texas' gas tax rate compares to other states'.